Looks like Boulder is content with its lack of affordable homes

On Feb. 12, city planning consultant Charles Buki summoned the courage to bring a vision of affordability to Boulder. Then, half a moment later, he discovered the truth of the matter: Boulder homeowners prefer exactly the opposite. In striving to preserve its character, Boulder has grown prohibitively expensive, leaving middle-income families out in the cold. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Speaking at a City Council planning session, Buki explained that Boulder’s own policies, not cruel fate, were to blame for the area’s woeful lack of affordable homes. But as The Daily Camera learned from Councilman Ken Wilson, that’s precisely the point. To quote reporter Erica Meltzer: “Wilson said he believes many Boulder residents are satisfied with the high cost of housing.”

Of course they are. A $100,000 increase in the median home value over the last decade can have that effect. If you’re at all interested in equality, however, or someday affording a place in Boulder, then using legislation to secure all the city’s joys for current homeowners alone should rub you the wrong way.

To be sure, using price to determine access often makes sense: A Lexus costs more to build than a Toyota, so it’s reasonable to expect buyers seeking luxury-car benefits to pick up the tab. That’s how a free-market society operates: We use price to achieve an equitable distribution of most goods and services.

But Boulder has taken the opposite path. As Buki pointed out, the city has intervened in the market, artificially inflating prices by restricting access to, and use of, real estate.

The stated intent of measures like Boulder’s greenbelt, which preserves the open space surrounding the city, and a 55-foot height restriction on new development is to maintain the character of the place. In practice, however, these policies hoard all the benefits for current property owners who like the city just the way it is, while hanging everyone else out to dry. To that end, a 2010 report from citizen group PLAN Boulder County suggests, in all seriousness, that Boulder would fare better if prospective residents would just stop choosing to live there.

So Boulder is not a Lexus. It is not a luxury city of slab granite and super-star architecture. Its housing stock is, for the most part, neither new nor particularly remarkable. And as such, the city’s higher housing costs derive not from the added expense of the inputs and the labor — lumber, rebar and carpenters cost about the same in Boulder as they do anywhere else — but from the land and the policies that govern it.

Boulder’s land is expensive both because it’s in high demand, and because the city’s greenbelt artificially restricts the supply of it. That Boulder also limits the number of units that can be built on any given parcel only compounds the problem. But because it’s the city itself which has caused the problem, it is the city which can solve it.

These various restrictions amount to an enormous tax on new development, dictating policy for every property owner, but like any tax, these restrictions can be removed. For everyone who wants to live in Boulder and can’t afford it, there is enormous injustice in these policies, an injustice worth ending.

If Boulderites can tolerate the inequality their policies create to preserve the city they have produced, that’s their prerogative. But I suspect they are willing and capable of finding a middle road. Allowing more flexibility in land-use around the most popular areas represents a start, but a more serious conversation about density and landmark status must be on the table as well.

At this point, a painless path no longer exists, but failing to take action would produce far more pain for the thousands along the Front Range who have been denied the chance to enjoy life in one of the country’s best cities. They deserve that opportunity.

Andy Peters of Denver (alwpeters@gmail.com) is an account executive at a public relations firm and a recovering Summit County ski bum. Colorado Voices is an annual competition among writers vying for the opportunity to publish columns of regional interest in The Denver Post.

Vincent Carroll is The Denver Post's editorial page editor. He has been writing commentary on politics and public policy in Colorado since 1982 and was originally with the Rocky Mountain News, where he was also editor of the editorial pages until that newspaper gave up the ghost in 2009.

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